Author(s): The British Library

Gifts & Humour

This new book is a celebration of love through the ages, gathering together more than 100 romantic illustrations from the flirtatious to the kitsch, the charming to the ironic. The vintage imagery is drawn from a huge range of sources - fashion magazines, medieval illuminated manuscripts, book covers, paintings and cartoons - and it ranges from exquisite depictions of courtly love in the Middle Ages to the pulp novels of the twentieth century; from elves in fairy-land to a honeymoon in space. Great lovers from literature - Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester, Vishnu and Lakshmi - are lavishly represented alongside a host of first kisses, assignations in the garden, moonlight serenades, and walks down the aisle.